I do love Tulsi Gabbard because she’s the strongest anti-war candidate, and her resigning from the DNC to support Bernie in 2016 was an act of tremendous political courage and ethics. Of course, I still love Bernie, and I think he’s going to be the next president, if he can get past the DNC. Mike Gravel is cool, but he’s not serious. Then there’s Jay Inslee. He’s among that group of candidates who poll at 1% or lower, but he’s not a political outsider like Marianne Williamson or Andrew Yang. He was governor of Washington, so that’s something.
And he’s running with the environment as his central issue. He thinks there should be a debate dedicated to climate change. The DNC has said no. Let me repeat that. The Democratic National Committee has said that they specifically do not want to talk about the subject of climate change.
I can’t imagine why. Oh, it might hurt some candidates. Like Beto O’Rourke, who does not support a ban on fracking, and anybody who takes money from oil companies, or who has ever voted for an unnecessary pipeline, which is most of them, actually.
Also, this (and the fact that they’ve fiddled with the rules to qualify for debates 3 and 4) makes me worried that the Democrats are planning to get by on just 4 or 5 debates before the primaries again, which means they’ll probably schedule them opposite football games again, which is an absurdly bad strategy. It’s what they did in 2016. Meanwhile, the Republicans were having something like 20 or 30 debates, giving all their candidates lots of TV time. Look who won that election.
Of course the Democrats should have one debate dedicated to climate change. They should have one debate about taxing the rich. They should have a debate about education. They should have a debate about health care. They should have a debate about legalizing marijuana, ending private prisons, and school shootings. They should have debates about ending unemployment, and homelessness, and fixing our infrastructure. They should have a debate about foreign affairs. They should be having shit-tons of debates.
And let the best candidate win.